There are few consumer goods as resource-intensive and unnecessary than bottle water, which costs more than gasoline and often comes from municipal water sources. Most of the time -- in this country at least -- you're no better off drinking bottled water than the H20 coming out of your tap. And yet each year, Americans buy more than 28 billion petroleum-based plastic bottles of the stuff, 80 percent of which will end up in landfills.

As our friends at Envirovore have detailed, some local governments are taking proactive steps to limit their bottled water intake. Officials in Seattle recently banned city purchases of bottled water, following a similar move by San Francisco in 2007. Even Alec Baldwin wants you to end your Dasani addiction.

Now California is fighting back against the industry. On Tuesday, state Attorney General Jerry Brown said he would sue Swiss-based Nestle over a massive proposed water-bottling operation unless the company further evaluates the facility's electrical demands and GHG emissions.

Nestle plans to build the 350,000-square-foot facility on the outskirts of McCloud, a former lumber town about 280 miles north of San Francisco. The plan is to pump about 200 million gallons of water a year from three natural springs, the same place where the town gets their own water for free. The 200 million gallons, which is half of what Nestle originally wanted to pump, is enough water to fill 3.1 billion 8-ounce plastic bottles.

"Nestle will face swift legal challenge if it does not fully evaluate the environmental impact of diverting millions of gallons of spring water from the McCloud River into billions of plastic water bottles," Brown said this week.

Nestle officials say they're already planning studies on air and water quality as part of an environmental review, and that the company "appreciates the attorney general's letter."